While the Bush administration again threatened to veto the Medicare bill which rejects a 10.6 percent cut in payments to doctors who care for millions of older Americans, the Democrats seem certain that a veto override is doable and will go through even if the president tries to block the law.

The House passed a bill to prevent the Medicare pay cut by a vote of 355 to 59 just before the Fourth of July recess, and passed the Senate in a dramatic vote Wednesday. The unexpected Senate support was at least partly triggered by the surprise appearance of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who is recovering from surgery for brain cancer.

While both Republicans and Democrats were unsure of the outcome going into the vote, it turned out a 69-30 as 18 Republicans supported the bill, even though last month the same Senate rejected it. Now the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act is likely to be vetoed by Bush and the president's veto to be overridden.

The law will affect nearly 50 million seniors, as well as nearly 10 million military personnel. According to an AMA poll, more than 60 percent of the doctors involved declared they would considerably limit their number of Medicare patients should the pay cuts disabled by the bill become effective. Stimulating doctors by allowing them to earn more money as well as making it more clear what kind of payments they have to make to insurance companies would benefit senior citizens, who would have been more likely to be accepted by doctors as their patients under these conditions.
 
The American Medical Association also got involved in this dispute backing the bill and blaming Senate Republicans who tried to block it in a series of radio and TV commercials, accusing them of favoring insurance companies over doctors and elderly patients. The AMA ads say these senators are aiding “powerful insurance companies at the expense of Medicare patients’ access to doctors.” The commercials pointed at 10 Republican senators, including seven up for election this fall.

Meanwhile, a Congressional investigation revealed the fact that the federal government paid fraud artists almost $100 million for claims of wheelchairs, canes, prescription drugs and other items submitted under the names of hundreds of dead doctors over the past decade.

Federal investigators say that Medicare scammers used the ID numbers of deceased doctors, sometimes more than 15 years after their deaths, in Minnesota and across the nation, to make withdrawals at will, a similar process to using an ATM.